Jennifer Zdenek, the mother of an 11-year-old autistic boy, is outraged at Microsoft's Xbox Live for labelling her son a cheat and taking back all his online achievements, which she claims were earned fairly.
Zdenek said her son, Julias Jackson, only seems to have cheated because he's so good at playing Xbox games. She insisted …

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Hmm...

I know someone who works for xbox support and he assures me that the parents always say that their sun/daughter couldn't have possibly been cheating and are just good at the games. This guy is lucky not to have been kicked off xbox live, they don't make accusations of cheating without _knowing_ that it has been going on.

@@cmdrx3

I have a fair bit , while cheating is both understandable and perhaps commendable in some ways, it shouldn't be without consequence, which in any case seems rather minor.

In the UK mum would be on the receiving end of some stern advice from social services by now due to the publicity, child's age and choice of game - a professional carer or teacher etc might well be collecting their P45.

@moderators Re: Not so spot on.

Re: @moderators Re: Not so spot on.

Taken in context that post was fine. (not sure why it has been deleted.) The critical context being that it was posted after the followup story was published. Unfortunatly it didn't make reference to that fact so could look abusive to those (AC above) who fail to see what was going on....

I cant help but think that the followup story should have beeen posted as an update to this story to prevent the two sepearte comment threads and misunderstanding of cross posting that has arisen. Read both stories and the comments will make sense.

F*** YOU MICROSOFT!!!!

You're no better than those noobs in Battlefield 1942 that claimed I was cheating because I could shoot their Japenese Zero out of the sky, with a destroyer's artillery gun while at full speed, at half a km. Yeah, it seemed impossible, and i even amazed myself, but if you do nothing but play games sooner or later you'll tune your movements to the optimal way of playing, and slaughtering everyone in sight.

What next, kicking people off the servers because some whining camper claims it's cheating to shoot him while he thinks he's hidden? Or maybe kicking people because they know how to circle strafe around players, that are too stupid to return the favour? I'd bet dollars to donuts, some bitch at MS got his ass handed to him by this kid, and the only way he could get back is have his stats reset. You're lucky that kid's autistic, because if it was me, I'd spin kick you in the throat!

Instead of resetting all the guys stats, why don't one of you fatasses get off the couch you're glued to, and drive to Seattle to see if he's actually that good. It's right in your backyard you fat fucks!

Achievement Unlocked: Parental Naïvety

Microsoft's gamerscore cheat detection is pretty advanced - otherwise they'd be banning hardcore gamers all the time. As I understand, it's based on detecting achievements that couldn't possibly have been gained simultaneously - for instance, if on Monday I have 0 gamerscore on Super Gunfighter Noobs, and on Tuesday I log on and unlock the "Played your first online game" and "Play 50,000 online games" achievements at the same time, something's probably afoot. Repeat this pattern across multiple games and you've likely got yourself a cheater. (Complicated slightly if you play offline a lot - but he's a Gold subscriber and a game addict, so not applicable.)

Oh, and the video news report clearly shows this 11-year-old boy playing Dead Rising and Halo, both of which are rated M for Mature in the US. If you're going to insist on whiny finger-pointing, Jennifer Zdenek, why not start closer to home?

PS3

Hard to tell, but if true then

It's always hard to know what the deal is with stories like this because we've got so few details to do any real analysis. If the mom's allegations are true, it still doesn't mean that MS a truly evil descriminator against persons with disabilities. It could just be that they're stupid. This *is* the same company that came up with "Bob", after all. Maybe we should all hang our heads in shame for having anything to do with their products. As for the suggestion that someome get the kid a PS3, I'd say either that or a Wii -- mostly because I think the people over at Nintendo are really nice guys and to my knowledge never installed rootkits in their customer's computers.

Looks like someone is getting a PS3 for his next birthday.

yup PS3!

one way of dealing with it..i'm mildly autistic and on a good day can be quite good at online games (battlefield mostly) and there's loads of finns that play all winter during the dark hours are they gonna ban all them as well?

if they can prove it, that's another matter, if not, they have just simply made themselves look fools.

Get out more

Ok, I don't know much about autism but surely any 11 year old, autistic or not, shouldn't have an XBox as their major source of interaction outside of school? Perhaps his mum should stop being so outraged and involve him in some sort of real life social interaction?

And I say that as an avid gamer with young kids who look destined to be avid gamers themselves - except I don't let them at it everyday. Yes, it would be easier to indulge them and allow them on the console whenever they want but it wouldn't be right.

But...

When your autistic, it becomes EXCEPTIONALLY difficult to make friends. And without friends, what is there to do in free time? The kid could even be trying to avoid people because he is being bullied (VERY likely)!

Given that, spending all day on the Xbox doesn't seem like such a bad proposal to someone like him.

As the father of a boy with an ASD

Autistic children have problems interacting with others, partly because they don't understand others or the rules of interaction, partly because trying to play by the rules of social interaction is tiring and stressful ...

Even the most adjusted kids with an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) need timeouts or space to not be on guard all the time.

Another big thing about kids with an ASD is the obsessions that they have, you might imagine that you have a fixation on something or someone, but for them it's a case of every breath, every thought, every word is targeted ... It can be very hard to get your child to do anything but that obsession.

Having said all that my son has to be watched because he can turn aggressive if not given strict times that he is allowed on to the computer/console ... we used to have to physically restrain him when removing him after 1/2 hour of play time so that he didn't hurt himself or the computer that he was using.

Knowing that he has a fixed limit of play time (using a timer that he cannot change) and him being a bit older means that this problem is much improved. Asking _him_ to turn off the computer is much better than _me_ turning off the computer as it leaves him feeling in control.

Having set limits on time (50 minutes is a kinda maximum before he gets grumpy) and appropriateness (not before bedtime, not when he's tired) and, unlike the mother of this child, I will not let him play on anything above a PG ... he is only 10

Oh no he isn't... Oh yes he is...

Ok...

Now we know you don't like MS, you go on about it enough, but MS are one of the best companies in the world to work for or be a customer of if you have disabilities or are diverse from "normal" in some way.

Also, you seem to suggest that everyone who is Autistic is some sort of savant, this is considered grossly offensive by the vast majority of autistic spectrum disorder sufferers. I know two Asberger's sufferers, both find interacting with others difficult, both are good with computers, neither is a savant, in fact neither of them know a savant or anyone who does. However, both are quite capable of knowing that cheating is wrong and that there would be consequences if they were caught doing so, this is the situation where most autistic spectrum sufferers find themselves.

Update on the story

Turns out the kid handed his account over to someone else to get Recon armour in Halo. That's where the cheating happened.

Mom backpedals furiously, non-story comes to an end, Microsoft are somehow still the bad guy.

I've never seen the MS banhammer used incorrectly. There are always cries of injustice and threats to never buy an MS product again, but the truth is MS (and Bungie) don't do this kind of thing on a whim, they have enough data to make the right call.

If you are a blantant cheat and want to carry on doing it, feel free to go do it on PSN, XBL doesn't want you.

Looks like someone is getting a PS3 for his next birthday

"through many hours of hard work"

Playing to the peanut gallery

I don't see why every news site I've seen mentions the fact that he's autistic. Surely that is irrelevant (it certainly isn't an excuse, or proof either way about his guilt or lack of) and it comes down to one thing. Did he cheat or not? If he did then sorry, but Microsoft are in the right. If he didn't then they're not. Discussion over.

Microsoft FAIL

How is this possible? I haven't lost any PS3/PSN trophies, or even heard of Sony doing such a thing. So why should MS do such a thing? I thought Achievements/Points were more of a "dick wavering measure unit", in which case MS shouldn't even worry if someone earns points faster or not.

Good riddance, Zdenek would do well with cancelling XBL service. Paying for "online gaming" already sounds like pimping off gamers, but resetting achievements on a paid service?

Re: Calm Daan

I bet most of those employees would agree with you. The reason Microsoft has to take themselves too seriously is that *gamers* take themselves too seriously. Gamers put so much importance on these stupid achievements that if Microsoft went soft on cheating, it would be a significant marketing and PR issue.